Empire Earth II

       When a game is named Empire Earth, anything less than massive would fail to live up to its title. Thank God the game, when it came out in 2001, did prove to be an epic treat, spanning the entire gamut of human existence with a gameplay that brought to mind the now-classic Civilization and was even able to turn out an expansion a year after.
      
     The single player skirmish that I've tried out are German, American and Korean civilizations. Each civilization has a detailed set of characteristics that make each one special, and if that isn't enough, they also get their own unique units. This game certainly outdoes itself, boasting hundreds of various units and buildings, all scattered across 15 epochs of human history, which make for a game rife with possibilities.

Unlike other RTS game, Empire Earth II can be played at much slower pace. This means more time to make strategy on building placement and workers priority.

     The game took me to a semi-forested map, and while at start-up everything seemed like your typical RTS game, I soon found out that some things were a bit more complicated. For one, workers have to harvest seven kinds of resources, which range from food to iron turning to tin, then steel etc.

     As in the first game, technology plays a big part in Empire Earth II, Whether to assign workers to gather resources or to research tech points in crucial to one's strategy. Tech points can be used to advance your military, economic or imperial tech tree and more importantly, your civilization's epoch. So it's possible that while you're at an early epoch, busily amassing your barbarian horde, your technology-driven opponent might have already made a jump to modern times and now planning his nuclear strike on you.

Gunpowder-based units release a lot of smoke during combat, sometimes making fights hard to follow.

    Also worth of noticing is the use of the weather and how it affects the game in a big way.  Able to see heavy rains pour down, making building construction take longer than usual. It also lessened unit visibility and movement significantly, as is in the case of snow, which limited the players visibility as well, almost reducing the computer screen to a sheet of white.

    Overall, Empire Earth II was a wholly satisfying one. Even without a tutorial, you can able to grasp the concepts of this seemingly complex RTS.

Heavy Cavalry are some of the strongest earlier units. Some formations, like the phalanx, can improve their effectivity.